Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Tiger Shark Attack - The Shark Arm Murder Case

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

Wes covers the too-wild-to-be-made up case of one James "Jimmy" Smith, the man who found himself a little too deep in the organized crime scene of New South Wales, Australia, and at least a part of him a lot too deep in the belly of a tiger shark. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello listeners. Hello listeners. Welcome to Tooth and Claw podcast. Oh. I throw you off. Yeah. Where are we talking about today? We're talking about craters.

Animals. Sorry, I have COVID and it's been hard for me to control my voice tones. That's like one of my side effects. Wes and I will talk about animals. You can yell about them if that's how you want to do it, though. I just can't control. I don't know. That's like one.

I was reading about it. A lot of people, they're not able to control their tones. Okay. So you just yell. Sorry if any, yeah, I just yell and I act madder than I am. Oh. Yeah. What are we talking about?

You've had like all the symptoms now. Here, let me try again. What are we talking about today? You almost had it there, dude. How are you feeling? You feeling okay? I feel like every other episode you've had COVID. I've had a lot.

This is like fourth or, fifth but this was the first time it messed with my taste. Oh. And I was really confused because I was eating a box of good and plenny's. And gross. Which you like. I love them. Yeah.

And I was almost done. And then all of a sudden it tastes like burnt hair. And I threw them away. And I was so confused because I was like, someone messed with my good in plenny's, but I live alone. So how did that happen? And I was like, I have been flipping off. ghosts a lot just to make them do something maybe it's the ghost you know and ghosts are old enough to

eat good in plenties too but i kind of realized hey i probably have covid and uh yeah yeah messed with my smell too like chemicals smell really strong to me and gross hopefully it doesn't ruin reases for you like it has for my i was careful not to eat any so wouldn't even like yeah if it ruins good in plenies that's NBD, right? I like good and plenny's. I like good and plenny's. You're, I feel like candy prejudiced. Good and plenties are like a candy that when I was growing up, if someone offered them to me,

I would kind of be like, I guess, you know, it's better than no sugar, but I didn't want them. They're my lowest tier candy. Wow. Yeah. I can't think of a candy I like less than good in plenties. Maybe like the 30-year-old hard candies in your grandma's dish or something. Or would you want one of those? Well over good and plenny's.

Yeah. I like good and funny. Our grandma, our grandma Mary, who lived in Missoula, she kind of had a nervous break a little earlier in life, like in her 60s. And ever since then, she was a little, a little kooky. You know, she's a kooky lady. We loved her. But we would go over to her house or her apartment, and she had these nuts that were in

this container that had probably been there since, like, the 70s. and me and Jeff would tell her to give the other person nuts. Like she would ask if we wanted anything. And I'd be like, oh, Grandma, Jeff actually really wants some of those nuts. Do you still have those nuts? And it was kind of an unspoken rule that if she gave you the nuts, you had to eat some of them. And they were just rancid. They were so gross.

Yeah. Yeah, she's funny. I remember I went on a lunch date in high school there. Uh-huh. And I went with my friend Carrie. And I guess Carrie, I didn't even know, but I guess they had done like some service project there recently. So we went in there and she thought she knew Carrie and not me. She's like, hey, how are you to Carrie?

And just had no idea who I was. And it was really funny to me. I remember the time she was limping around and we asked her why she was limping. And she's like, well, I've only got one sock on. Yep. That's fair. Yeah. Makes sense.

You guys, just go ahead and put me out of my misery if I ever get crazy. Just one sock. You want us to do it? Yeah, I give you guys permission. How? How? How? How?

How? Feed me to a shark. Oh. Sure. Oh, okay. Which is actually... Because then they'll kill the shark. Oh, Jeff. You blew it.

Wes had it. Just teed it up for you for the first time ever and you don't take it. Yeah. You've got co-ed. It's understandable. I do have COVID brain. Yeah, you do. Yeah, the reason I said that is today we're going to talk about someone who was kind of in a way fed to sharks.

What? And it's a crazy story. It's one that's been on my list for a long time. I think the first time I did a subscriber episode, I wanted to do this story. And then as I looked into it more, I thought, you know, I really want to give this one some more time before I do it. And so I have, I've read a lot of the material that's been published about it. And then you kind of forgot about it and I sent it to you? Yeah.

Jeff reminded me the other day. And then I wasn't, I still wasn't going to do it. I get 50% credit for this episode. Because there's like, there's books that are hundreds of pages of long. What? 100 pages of long. 100 pages of longness. Pages long that are about this specific story.

I didn't end up reading those because I don't think it was necessary. but there is a lot of information about this particular story. So if you do want to do a deep dive, go ahead and read them. 100 pages long. Yeah, 100 of pages long. And if you do read those books, maybe record something like where you and a couple of your friends sit down and tell the story about what you read and then we'll listen to it. Maybe we'll even subscribe. Call it, yeah, call it skins and cooth and plaw.

I don't know. Yeah. Tooth and paw. Cluth and top. Oh, yeah, that's better. Tooth and paw. All right. So the sources that I did read for this were a 30-page kind of true crime novel by Alan J. Whitaker called the Shark Arm Murder.

And then I read an online article on Mental Floss by Michelle Debzak. I haven't heard of either of them. All right. Those are the two main sources that I used. And the reason that I did decide to pick this one now is because we're about to go to Australia. And Australia is where this happened. Me and Jeff and Mike and some members of our family, mine and Jeff's family, we're going to Australia.

We're going to go to Queensland to the Great Barrier Reef. But you guys may not know this. Our first night we're spending in Sydney and we're spending in this little, we're staying in this little beach town called Coogee Beach. And that's where this story takes place. The listeners didn't know that or me and Mike? You and Mike probably didn't know that. The listeners probably didn't either.

No. You've just been keeping that secret all to yourself. I haven't. I've been sending you guys lots of stuff. But I doubt you've looked at it. I just want to see a koala. That's all I don't care about. Jeff, we're doing a whole side trip just to get you a wild koala, just so you know.

That's all I care about. I just want to see a cassowary and we're doing a whole set trip. We're going to find koalas in the show. just going to be asleep and it's going to be like, that's fine. Yeah, that's fine. That's what they do. That and get chlamydia. All right. I'm going to grab it. So we are going to be, we're going to be doing a night in

Coogee Beach. It's a really tiny small beach town right outside of Sydney. Because we're staying there, I decided I want to do this this week because I think it'll be fun then to visit in a couple weeks. So a lot of our stories on this podcast are about mostly about animal tax, but they

have this kind of true crime element to them. This is the opposite. This is mostly a true crime story, but it has an animal attack element to it. So I think it's going to be fun. Cool. I think we're going to have a fun time with this one. All right. Let's put on our pants and get started.

Neither of you guys can do a 30s gangster accent in Australia. Oh, man. It's a hard one. I'm not even going to try. I can't even do an Australian accent. All right. Hey, I'm walking here. Okay, so no, we can't.

We're just going to go ahead and say for sure that's not something we can do. All right. In April 1935, Australia, like many countries around the world, was experiencing a great depression. A lot of people weren't employed, good work was really hard to come by, and families were having a really difficult time just getting food on the table. One man that was feeling it especially hard and was really vulnerable was Bert Hobson. Hobson lived in Coogee Beach, this quaint beach town on the end of Sydney. Yeah.

And it was really, this place was really well known for some ocean pools. And these ocean pools, I think these are kind of a popular thing in Australia. It's like a pool that's built right next to the ocean. So it's fresh water, or no, sorry, it's like a mix of salt and fresh, I think, but you swim in it. And then the ocean waves like crash into the pool as you're swimming. Oh, cool. So they're probably just saltwater, actually. But anyway, this Coogee Beach is known for having those ocean pools.

pools had a really thriving pier with like an arcade and a bunch of stuff. Arcades back then are different than arcades now. But a bunch of really cool tourist attractions and trappings that were really common for towns in the early 1900s. And then Hobbson, Bert Hobson, he ran the Koogee Aquarium and the swimming baths. And these were attractions that had been built in the late 1800s as part of the Koogee Palace. And the palace was built in the style of an English seaside resort. So it had this big beautiful dome with really.

elaborate paintings inside. It was just a really beautiful, cool place to have a seaside vacation. And it had been a really, really popular destination in Sydney. But in 1934, the nearby pier had closed, and the pier was probably the biggest attraction in the area. And the aquarium and the swimming bass were quickly falling into disarray. People didn't have the money to really spend on these sort of things anymore. And it was just, like a lot of businesses during the Great Depression, it was really starting to fall apart. Even the businesses were depressed? Yeah, everyone was depressed.

Wow. And the businesses. Except for the really, really hyper-rich people. Those guys are so awesome. They're not. I disagree. Bert, the guy who runs this aquarium and these swimming baths knew that he had to take some drastic measures quickly

or else he was going to lose the aquarium and would join the ranks of thousands of people that were unemployed in the city. One day in mid-April, 1935, Bert and his son Ron decided to go fishing offshore of Koogee Bay, and it didn't take long before Bert hooked a small shark. He's reeling in this smaller shark when suddenly a 14-foot large tiger shark charges in and attacks the smaller shark on the end of his line. Oh, no way.

So in the process of this tiger shark attacking and eating this smaller shark, it gets really wrapped up in his fishing line. He has really high-gauge fishing line. it gets wrapped up in it and tangled in it, and he manages to reel in a 14-foot tiger shark, which is pretty crazy. Nice. Nothing came up and like ate that tiger shark, though. Like in phantom menace?

Or just a bigger, there's always a bigger fish. Yeah. That would have been sweet. So Hobson staring down into the water at this massive shark, and he suddenly realizes that he might be looking at his salvation. There had been a series of brutal shark attacks over the previous 15th. years and they had really shaken the Koogee Beach area. And people are completely terrified and fascinated by sharks in Australia at this point.

They have a very different history than we talked about in the 1916 shark attacks in the U.S. Where at the time, do you guys remember what people thought of sharks before the New Jersey shark attacks? They thought turtles were more dangerous. Right. I mean, they just thought sharks were big fish. They just didn't see them as really a threat. Yeah.

Australia is very different. they had a long history of shark attacks. At this point in history, they knew very well what sharks were capable of. And at this point in time, there had been some really gnarly shark attacks. And Coogee Beach especially knew what they were capable of. So Hobson knows I've got a potentially man-eating shark here. I'm going to take it into the beach, and I'm going to put it in one of my aquarium pools and put it on display. Wow.

Yeah. Okay. He had an aquarium pool just ready to go. Yeah, he's the one that manages this aquarium. So he cleared out the biggest pool. So he's like catching fish to put in his aquarium kind of. Yeah, interesting. Okay.

And it works. People do want to see the shark. They're fascinated. They need a break from the monotony of the Great Depression. They're like, oh, gricky, look at this pointy tooth fish. Yeah, exactly. Hoy, is that a white pointer? That's pretty good.

So they've spent all this time seeing headlines about killer sharks. They can finally see one in person. And it really starts up a frenzy around the shark. And it peaked on Anzac Day. Anzac Day is kind of the Australian equivalent of Memorial Day, which is on April 25th. And hundreds of people had bought tickets to see the aquarium and the star of the show, this 14-foot tiger shark. They flock to the large pool where visitors could peer through glass portals on the side of the pool

and watch the Tiger Shark as it moved slowly through the water. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carrano in the main event.

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And I do think we'll probably do a subscriber episode on those two attacks because there's a whole other podcast dedicated to them. And they're pretty gnarly great white shark attacks. So this is an area where you can find the, you know, the top two dangerous and putting that in quotation mark sharks for people, which is great whites and tiger. sharks. They're both found in this area. Kooji Beach. So this is a, yeah, so this is like a very, you know, people have sharks on the brain in this type of place. All right. Yeah. What type of

swimsuits are they wearing? In 35, they're probably starting to like show a little ankle and stuff. Still like full body burlap, sacks, probably. Mom really was not accepting your answer that the type of swimsuit you wear doesn't matter.

She thinks you're asking for it if you dressed like a salmon or something. You know, there's probably some studies out there either. I think it matters if you're like going to dive with sharks. When I do when I free dove with sharks, they told me that I didn't want skin showing because it can look like a flashing fish or something. But if you're just going snorkeling, I don't think it really matters what your swimsuit looks like. What about red?

I think it's okay. Okay. I think that's fine. All right. So what people didn't understand. in 1935. Even for bull sharks. Yeah, bull sharks, I wouldn't worry about wearing red. I don't think they, I don't think bulls really react to it either. So what people didn't understand in 1935 was that these big macro predator sharks, so sharks like great whites, sharks like tiger sharks, great

hammerhead sharks, they do really terribly in captive aquariums. That's something that's well known now. You can't go catch a great white or tiger shark can throw it in an aquarium and expect it to live very long. They just don't. Even with today's technology and the huge aquariums that we have now, like Monterey Bay's tried to keep great whites a few times. I think the longest one ever was like a year, but generally they only make it a few weeks before they start bumping into the glass and showing that they're just not happy in this captive environment. They didn't know that, but they soon learned it because it was becoming rapidly apparent that this tiger shark was not doing well. It was swimming very slowly, super sluggish, super lethargic, bumping into walls, bumping into the glass, and acting really

erratically. So on April 25th, there's a group of roughly 14 people that's watching this really lethargic shark. When it suddenly starts thrashing in the water, it darts to the shallow end of this pool, and it starts retching and vomiting. So people are watching this. They're kind of disgusted as this cloud of brown vomit erupts into the pool. Yeah. It creates an oily film and just a disgusting stench. People are saying it smelled just awful. Wow.

And they see this cloud kind of erupt, and then as this vomit dissipates into the water and clears, they can clearly see some objects in the water. One of these objects is the carcass of a dead rat. One is the carcass of a dead bird. And the third is a human arm. Oh, no. The birds ate that person?

No. I think the person ate the bird who ate the rat. It was like what we were talking about earlier. Yeah. And then the shark. Well, they actually, some of the stuff I read said they think that the smaller shark actually ate the arm. And then the tiger shark ate it. And so it's kind of like a rushing stacking doll or something.

Yeah, the Matroska doll. Yeah. Oh, the smaller shark that the shark ate the hand? That's crazy. There's some people that say that. And the reason they think that maybe is because this arm was in such good condition that it would have digested a lot slower in the belly of the tiger shark if it was also in the belly of a dead shark. That's so weird. Maybe they heard what would Jeff do in one of our shark episodes where I just shove my arm down the throat.

They might have. Maybe a time traveler went back and played that specific episode. You think they removed their arm first before putting it into the shark's mouth? and they just ran away without an arm. That's actually funny you should ask that. We're going to get into that. Let's do it. I was just, before we do get into that,

I was just thinking about how awful it would be. It's 1935. You're like a struggling family in Sydney. You save for months to finally do something special for your kids. You take them to the aquarium and then a shark vomits a rat in front of them. Yeah. I don't know. You just be like, God, man.

Really? I feel like I'd rather watch. that, then watch it just like bump into walls. Yeah, it's a good point. It's a good point. I just feel like a shark vomiting, a dead rat has to be a metaphor for the depression. But who knows? You remember that 127 hours guy?

Yeah, Aaron Ralston. Aaron Ralston. You think anything ate his arm? Probably bugs. Bacteria. And the shark ate the bugs. Yeah. Or you go to like a bug zoo and one of the bugs.

and one of the bugs throws up a little bit of his arm, and the zoo goers are like, ew, gross. Do you think that happened, Wes? I don't. Wait, when did this happen? 1935. Oh, so that wasn't his arm.

It couldn't have to be. It wasn't Aaron Ralston, for sure. I think we can roll him out, unless he's the time traveler. It's a good thought, though. Her arm. Yeah, no, I was thinking, that's his arm. Yeah.

So when a shark vomits an arm into a pool, you have to call the police, and that's what they do. They call the police. Some plain-closed detectives show up. They collect the arm. And, Mike, this seems pretty cut and dry, right? If a shark vomits an arm out into a pool, what do you think these police were, like, what was their operating theory here when they're collecting this arm?

So when you say plain clothes, you mean they're dressed up in like a pilot's costume? No, I mean, just normal clothes, like their day-to-day clothes. Okay. What was the question? Man, I just can't. to answer how I want you to. No. That the shark ate the guy's arm.

Yeah, they thought this was a shark attack. They just thought, oh, you know, we have a shark attack. We're going to try and identify the victim. But as they're looking into the arm to identify whether or not they can figure out who this guy was, they notice a couple things that are really important. The first was that the arm had a very noticeable tattoo on it. And that tattoo was of two boxers squaring up against each guy. other and I picture in the 30s they were doing.

Yeah, that's the 30s boxing. Put the deeps up. One of the boxers is wearing red trunks and the other boxers wearing blue trunks. The other thing they immediately noticed is that the arm had been cut very neatly and had very cleanly been removed from the body by a

knife. And the shark had swallowed the arm after it had been removed from a body. Which is interesting. Yeah, especially they don't have like a ton of shark data. So like it's smart. they didn't think the shark could do that, you know? Yeah.

And if there is one shark that would be capable of doing close to that, it is a tiger shark. Because we've talked about that. They got those razor sharp teeth. Yeah, they have serrated teeth that point in opposite directions on each side of their mouth. Yeah. And they can cut through turtle shell with them. I mean, they're incredibly sharp saw-like teeth. And they do use them like a knife.

But this cut was so perfect that it couldn't have been from a shark. It had to have been from a knife. Okay. So pretty much immediately the police started investigating this case as a murder, not as a shark attack. Wow. So one person that read the news about the arm in the aquarium, who was really interested, was Edwin Smith. The description of the tattoo sounded an awful lot like the one his brother Jimmy had on his arm, and Jimmy had been missing for weeks.

So Edwin heads to the police station to take a closer look at the arm. All right. So we're going to jump back in the arm. time a little bit. Oh, nice. Just like that guy that's going back to tell the story. The 127 hours guy.

Yeah, he went back to show them the episode about Jeff's what you should do. All right. We'll diagram it all out and put it on Instagram for everyone. James Jimmy Smith was born in England in 1895

and then he immigrated to Australia in 1915 at the age of 20. He had dreams of being professional boxer, but he quickly realized that he wasn't going to make it as a pro. So he started working in a billiards club, and then he bought his own billiards room, which was likely a front for illegal gambling. He had married, he had a young son, and as far as things go during the depression, he's doing pretty well. He had big aspirations. He existed on the fringe of the Sydney criminal underworld, and he's well known in these different clubs and speakeas and whatnot in Sydney.

He was known as being a really snappy dresser, but he actually would rent all his fancy clothes because he knew they would make him more appealing to kind of these people that were into organized crime and they might want to bring them into their radius or into their orbit. And that actually worked. He attracted the attention of Reginald Holmes,

and Holmes was a local wealthy boat builder, and he decided he wanted Jimmy to work for him because he really liked Jimmy. He thought he was like a son. snappy dresser and just like a cool guy. Has there ever been a Reginald that isn't wealthy, do you think? No, I think you have to be wealthy if you're named Reginald. Or Holmes.

Yeah. Just really, yeah. This guy had like four names, actually, but I can't remember what the rest of them were. Of course he does. So he convinces Jimmy to sell his billiard room and invest the money into a project where they were going to develop some lots near Holmes's speedboat business. So they're going to build some houses or apartments, whatever, near this. speedboat business.

One other thing about Holmes, aside from being a boat builder and a wealthy businessman, he was also widely rumored to be a crime lord that ran drugs, liquor, and cigarettes, and organized really large scams. So this guy is a player in the crime scene in Sydney. Yeah, he's a, he's a Tony Soprano. Yeah, of Australia. He's not that big of a player. He's more just kind of like a low, a small time.

Yeah, sure. And Jimmy's kind of looking for these kind of opportunities. He's just trying to provide any way he can. Yeah. No, Christopher's like next in line if he didn't mess up. Anyway, Jimmy ends up going into a... Sure. Just keep naming Sopranos characters.

Jimmy ends up going into a lot of debt to fund this building project. He sells his billiard room. He goes into a lot of debt. And he's pretty much bankrupt by the time this thing's over. It doesn't turn out the way they wanted. So Holmes feels responsible for this, and he offers Jimmy some different jobs. He offers him a job as a launch captain in the nearby bay or marina. He gives him money for a new billiard room, and it's kind of what a lot of people think was

Holmes was just trying to take care of Jimmy because Jimmy was privy to a lot of the scams that Holmes was running, and he didn't want Jimmy to rat on him. So he really just wanted to keep Jimmy happy. And they found a rat in his stomach. In the shark's stomach, yeah. So in 1933... It's like the end of the departed. It's a sign, you know.

It is. Very symbolic. In 1933, that actually is kind of symbolic. I didn't think about it. Okay. Holmes buys an expensive yacht named Pathfinder, and he insures it for much more than it's worth. And then he hires Jimmy to take this yacht out into the harbor and destroy it

so he could claim the insurance money. Jimmy does this, and it's this big. debacle, the ship's on fire, it's really dangerous, they send rescuers out to help him. He says he doesn't want to be rescued and he rose himself to shore. And as soon as he gets to shore, he's arrested by the police and they question him. And during this questioning, he lets it slip that Holmes actually own the boat. And this leads to Holmes not being able to get the insurance money for the boat.

Oh, no. So he's out a lot of money. And Jim is actually... Insurance scams. They never work, I feel. They don't. You think in 1935 you could pull it off, though. Yeah.

Those insurance companies are smart. They're smart. They know what they're up to. All right. But Jimmy's actually pretty upset because he risked his life sinking this boat. And he still demands his cut of the money, even though he's responsible for the fraud going off the rails. Come on, Jimmy. Yeah, for Holmes.

Yeah, for Holmes. No. Holmes is starting to realize he's got a real loose wire here. He's got someone that he can't necessarily trust. And he's starting to hear these rumors. going around town that Jimmy's actually a police informant. And what they would call a police informant back then in Australia was a fissor. I like that. Yeah. So there are some rumors that maybe he's a fissor. All right. So in 1934, Jimmy Smith meets Patrick Brady. Patrick Brady is an experienced conman

and he's a professional forger. So he's really good at forging people's signatures. The two pull Holmes into an elaborate check forging scam, and Holmes, who had been really careful in his life to maintain a balance between legitimate business stuff and then the criminal stuff that he's doing, he's starting to feel really uncomfortable with how reckless Jimmy's getting and this new guy, Patrick Brady.

He just feels like they're kind of flying too high, you know? And some people think that Jimmy had even started to blackmail Holmes telling him that he would go to the police if Holmes wasn't giving him money and jobs. So he'd be... He'd fizz on him. Yeah, he's fizzing.

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your agent handles it all. In fact, we're so confident restoration is guaranteed, pour your money back. Isn't it nice to have someone like that on your side? Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com slash Spotify. Terms apply. So in early April 1935, Jimmy's wife and son decide to go on a short trip to see their family, and Jimmy tells her that he's going to go on a fishing trip with friends for a few nights. And on the night of April 7th, he and Brady were last seen together playing cards and getting rowdy at the Cecil Hotel, and then witnesses said they left together and went to a nearby cottage that Brady was renting for some more drinking.

A few hours later, disheveled-looking Brady was seen leaving the cottage and catching a cab. And we know this because the police later interviewed the cab driver. And Jimmy never left the cottage, at least not in one piece. Oh, one piece. So when Jimmy didn't show up a few days later, his wife starts worrying. but because of his illegal activity, she didn't report his disappearance to the police, but she told his family members and friends that he was missing.

So then we skip forward a couple weeks. The shark vomits up the arm, and all these domino pieces start falling. Holmes leaves town the next day when he hears about this arm and the shark for a business trip to Melbourne. But when he returns, the police are ready. They're ready to talk to him.

They pay him and visit, and they interrogate him about his relationship to Jimmy. and he had an alibi for the night that Jimmy disappeared, but he's visibly shaken and distraught when the police show up to question him. So they decide they're going to keep an eye on him. They're like, there's something up with this Holmes guy, besides the fact that his name's Reginald. Keep your eye on Reginald out there.

The shark is obviously dying, and it's failing to attract much of a crowd. So Hobson kills it and he dumps it in a trash heap nearby, which to me is just so sad to pull this amazing animal out of the ocean, and then it winds up in a trash heap. Yeah. The police come talk to him and they're like, oh, you just got rid of it? It may have had more important evidence in its stomach.

So he tells them where he ditched the shark. They cut it open. They don't find anything else. No other human remains inside of the shark. Case is starting to get a little cold when something weird happens. Jimmy's 14-year-old son gets a letter from Jimmy that's addressed to his house. And the letter pretty much tells his son that Jimmy's still alive. but he's on the lamb, and then his son would have to be the man in the house for a little while.

Whoa. This letter is an obvious forgery. Ah, okay. Who did we talk about that's good at forgery? Patrick Brady. Oh, this guy. I don't like this guy. I don't know about this guy, if I'm being honest.

Because of this letter, the police suddenly have some really strong interest in Patrick Brady, and it doesn't take long for them to arrest him and charge him with the murder of Jimmy Smith. Wow. So they interrogate Brady for like six hours, and he finally starts telling the police that Holmes was the mastermind of the whole plot and that Holmes had hired Brady to kill Jimmy because the man had become a huge liability. Holmes, who like must have a six cents for police pressure by then, this very same day he gets into a speedboat and heads out into Sydney Harbor

right around the time that the police are showing up at his house to arrest him. How fast are speedboats going back in the 1930s, you think? probably like four miles per hour. High speed chase. Oh, it's funny you should say that. In his speedboat, he has a bunch of liquor and he has a 32 revolver. So he speeds out into the harbor. He gets blackout drunk.

He raises the revolver to his head and fires a single round. But it's a really poorly made bullet. It strikes his skull and flattens against the hard bone of the skull. Oh, wow. It's a hard skull. Yeah. It's like a bowling ball. Yeah, this guy should be the boxer.

Apparently he had wrapped like a rope up in his arm, though. The impact from the bullet causes him to fall into the water, but he survives and the water wakes him up, and then he climbs this rope back into the boat. And some bystanders witnessed this whole thing, and they report it to the police. And the police are like, how do we recognize this guy? And they're like, he has a fucking bullet hole in his head.

That's how you recognize him. So it actually wouldn't be hard for the police to find him, though, because when they show up in the harbor, he speeds off in his speedboat. He's drunk. He's dazed from shooting himself in the head. And he leads the police on like a multiple hour high speed boat chase through Sydney Harbor. Holy-how. Like a face off.

Yeah, I guess like the police would do like a cutting motion into him. And then he would spin his boat around and go the opposite direction. They just couldn't catch it. They finally corner him and catch him, and when they grab him, he says the following. He says, why didn't you come to me? If you gave me until 12 o'clock tonight, I'll finish the other bastard. Jimmy Smith is dead. I'm nearly dead, and there's only one other person left.

If you leave me until tonight, I'll finish him. He said that to the police? Yeah. That's a direct answer. Tempting offer. They were probably thinking. I don't think you understand. That's why you're in trouble.

Yeah. He's in really bad shape. They take him to the hospital. The doctors say he's probably going to make a full recovery that this bullet was just like flattened against his skull. So weird. Aluminum foil. Yeah. When he's recovered enough to speak and write, the police interrogate him.

And he spills the details of what he says actually happened. he claims that he had nothing to do with the murder that he didn't even want Jimmy Smith dead and he said that Jimmy had been killed over another matter and that his dismembered body had been thrown in suitcases and into the bay into the bay and then the arm had actually been kept by Brady Brady had tied a rope to the arm

and he'd taken it to Holmes's office and dangled it in front of Holmes and he said pretty much if he didn't cut him in to his criminal stuff that Holmes would die like Brady had. Oh, man. Like Jimmy had. That Holmes would die like Jimmy had. So this is Brady threatening Holmes.

Holmes panics. Brady leaves the arm in his office. He knows that he can't report the murder at this point because he's worried he's going to wind up an accessory or something. So he decides to throw the arm into the ocean. And that is where it's eaten by a shark. And then vomit it up in front of over a dozen people on April 25th, which is just wild when you think about it.

Yeah. That's amazing. So crazy. Doesn't end there. So Holmes pretty much points the finger right at Brady. And he even says... Which finger? The arms? No, one of his fingers. Oh, I thought he got the arm and pointed it at it. No. He points one of his own still alive fingers at Brady. And he tells the cops, he says, listen, I'll testify in a case. And that case is about to happen. They already have it all lined up against Brady. and Holmes says I'll testify. It's going to happen like the next day.

So the police decide like, okay, we'll let you testify. We'll let you off easy. But they want to put a guard on Holmes. And Holmes is like, no, no, no, no. I don't need a guard. I'll go home. I'll be careful. And the police are like, if you go home, you have to tell us if you're going to leave.

And he's like, I will, I promise. And the police really don't want him to panic. So they allow him to do this because they're worried if they just put a guard on him and all this stuff that he's going to decide not to give it. evidence. So they're letting him do his thing. Ends up being a bad idea. Yeah. He goes home. He pulls $500 out or 500 pounds out of the bank on his way home. When he gets home, he tells his wife that he has a really bad headache, but that she should

wake him up at 8 p.m. because he has to go meet a business associate. So his wife's like, maybe you should just listen to what the police said and not go out. And he's like, no, I'm going out. Don't tell me what to do. Yeah. He's like, I already shot. myself point blank in the head I can't be killed he's feeling invincible yeah he thinks he's invincible that's a good point i don't think so she wakes him up he goes out and he doesn't come home that night his wife calls it in in the middle of the night the police go out and they find his body in the passenger seat of his car with three bullet holes in his heart and a witness reported seeing a man approach his car and fire the shots into the car at close distance and then the police

when they look at the arrangement of the bullet holes and the angle, they say it's impossible that they were self-inflicted. They had to been from someone else and that Holmes was murdered. But a big theory, and this is what a lot of people who have investigated this case think, they think that Holmes killed, he paid to have someone kill him so that his family could get an insurance payout. Because if it's suicide, they wouldn't get it. Interesting.

But that he hired someone to do it. Either way, he is dead, and he can't be a witness anymore in this case against Brady, and the case falls apart because the state needed a body, and apparently at this time in Australia, an arm didn't constitute a body. So Brady's released, and Brady actually dies comfortably in his home as a 76-year-old man in like 1965 or something, somewhere in the 60s. So one last little tidbit. There's a book by Alex Castles called The Shark Arm Murders that came.

out in 1995. I think this is kind of considered like the book when it comes to this case. And he reveals in this book, he did a lot of investigation, that James Smith was actually, Jimmy Smith was actually murdered by a criminal named Eddie Wyman after Jimmy Smith had become a fissor. And it was like he had given information to the police. And Wyman was one of the most dangerous criminals in Sydney. And he was caught because of this information that Jimmy gave to the police so that they think that Wyman contracted Brady to murder Smith. So Brady's still involved, but they think that Wyman was the guy behind it. And this Wyman guy was actually shot 10 years later by another gunman in Sydney, Chow Hayes during a gangland quarrel. So there's all

sorts of nefarious stuff going on in Sydney in the 1930s. So the whole catalyzing event for the police even begin investigating was the arm getting vomited out, right? Nothing that happened. This guy catching a tiger shark. That's so crazy. Otherwise, I don't think anyone would have ever reported his death even. Yeah. Because no one wanted any police scrutiny on themselves.

Holmes would still be alive today. Yeah. Not today. 200-year-old. Yeah. In either 2001 or 2002, I got varying different article. said different things. Fishermen in Australia caught an 11-foot tiger shark in New South Wales, which is Coogee Beach is in New South Wales, so Sydney. They opened up its stomach and human bones and a

human skull came out. And they were actually able to identify the remains and find an identity for the victim, someone who had disappeared while swimming, so a shark attack. But because of that, because they identified a victim through bones found in a shark, this case kind of got brought to the forefront of the public again. Oh, yeah. So people started. talking about it again, which is pretty interesting when you think about these sort of things. If the world were like a sleep number mattress, everything would adapt for your comfort. Because as your life changes and your body changes, sleep number mattresses adapt and shift to give you personalized comfort night after night. And now everything's on sale during our

Memorial Day event. Save up to $1,200 on mattresses for a limited time. To experience a whole new world of comfort visit a sleep number store or go to sleep number.com. Sleep number to a good life sleep. Well, it's been a minute since we covered tiger sharks. Actually, I don't think it's been that long, but we're going to go over a little bit of their biology anyway. This is a really fascinating shark. We're not going to really dive too deep into it.

If you do really want to deep dive into tiger shark biology, go back to our Townsville Tiger Shark Shipwreck episode. Townsville is actually another place we're staying. We're going to do some herping in Townsville, as my friend said. I did know that. So, Tiger Sharks are commonly found. How they come up with Townsville? Yeah, that's a lazy name.

Hey, what should we call our town? Townsville. Village. Town. Let's combine. Citiburg. So Tiger Sharks are most commonly found in tropical and temperate waters. So you can pretty much draw a band around the world

that would go as high as the northeast in the United States or like the southern islands of Japan and as low as Southern Australia and Northern Argentina. That'd take a while though. Yeah, it would. To draw that band. Yeah. Pretty much saying the whole, maybe a modern-day Magellan.

The whole middle half of the earth is it's habitat of tiger sharks, the water parts of it at least, the ocean, the salt water parts. Tiger sharks are sexually dimorphic. The females get a lot larger than the males. Oh, nice. Gropower. Girl boss. Females can approach like 20 feet and weigh over 3,000 pounds,

making them the second largest macro predator shark after the Great White. So Great Whites are both weight and length larger than Tiger Sharks, but these guys get just about as big. Speaking of second, they're also the shark with the second highest number of unprovoked attacks on humans after Great Whites once again.

Yeah. We bring up those stats quite a bit, but there is something I've been wanting to bring up when talking about those stats. I was looking at the shark attack file that's maintained by University of Florida, I believe, and there's one big section that says unknown Requiem shark and there's like 51 attacks attributed to unknown Requiem shark.

And a Requiem shark is a family of sharks like bull sharks, reef sharks, kind of like really classic looking sharks are Requiem sharks. And there's like just a bunch of those sharks that have attacked people that people weren't sure what species it was. So the reason I bring that up is say like 30 or 40 of those attacks. were bull sharks, then bull sharks would actually be our number two shark in the world when it comes to attacks. Oh, okay.

So, like, there is a little bit of an asterisk when you're talking about what species is number two. Yeah. Could be bull sharks. It could be tiger sharks. Right now, tiger sharks hold the spot. Because of the red swimsuits? Uh, that's, that's not because of the red swimsuits, but maybe, but no. I don't know.

Okay. If I'm, but, you know, if I'm out swimming by myself and I see a shark approach, I would rather it be a bull shark than a tiger shark. You're taking your red shorts off? I'll take off my red shorts, too. Okay. A big part of the reason why tiger sharks are one of the sharks that do attack people more often is their diet. They're some of the more opportunistic sharks out there.

They can really eat a wide variety of foods. In some parts of their range, sea turtles are one of their main food sources. And to cut through a sea turtle shell and actually get to the soft things is, pretty impressive. Like, you have to be a pretty impressive predator to do that. And that's really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to strange things that have been found in Tiger Shark's stomachs that they've been documented to eat. So here's a list of a few of the things that they've found in Tiger Shark's stomachs, aside from a human arm with a boxing tattoo on it. Although that wasn't in its stomach anymore, was it?

No. It was like, yeah. I was thinking like the xenomorph. You know how like it opens its mouth and it has like another. mouth that comes out? Is there like a different stomach for each of those mouths? Because imagine the stuff you find in a xenomorph stomach is what I'm really trying to ask. I don't think that little mouth that comes out of it is like has its own digestive system. But I'm not sure. We'll have to ask Geiger, right? Geiger, yeah, or Ridley. I think Ridley is still alive at least. Geiger would be a little

harder to get a hold of. Or maybe what's her face knows? It's a gornie weaver. All right. Okay. So some things they found in tiger sharks. A full suit of armor. Flying foxes. Wow. The bats.

License plates from almost every U.S. state. Barbies. An African porcupine. Several breeds of dog. Rubber boots. A small chicken coop with dead chickens inside. An expensive fur coat. A bag of money.

Sea birds and sea birds. and see snakes. A bag of money sounds like a little video game where you like catch a shark and it gives you money. Has the little like brown sack with the money symbol on it. Full suit of armor is crazy. I know. Can you imagine being like a orca that eats a tiger shark

and then you hurt your tooth on a full suit of armor in it? It'd be like when you get aluminum foil in your teeth. Yeah, or like every once in a while at Taco Bell, Like my meat has bone in it and it just hurts my teeth. You gotta stop peanut taco bell my hand. All right. So I think of every shark species out there, this is really the species most prone to investigate different food sources

and to just see if something is food. And that's part of the reason why I do think they're responsible for such a large number of attacks on people, is that they are highly opportunistic. We've talked about how great whites will bite people, but they often don't continue biting because they decide that's not food. I think tiger sharks aren't necessarily the same way. There are these investigative bites, but there are also tiger sharks that will continue to feed on a person.

Kind of like that video that scarred me last year from the Red Sea. I don't like that video. Yeah, neither do I. Okay. So we're not going to do too much biology, like I said, but I do briefly want to go over what you should do if you encounter a tiger shark in the wild. And I do want to mention, I have personal friends who have spent their lives swimming with tiger sharks. They are shark researchers who free dive with tiger sharks almost every day. And this is not an animal that just sees us as prey.

It happens sometimes, but this is not an animal that we should villainize or demonize because, you know, there are many, many, many, many more positive interactions between humans and the species than there are negative. but I do want to go over what you should do. So first of all, like all of our aquatic predators, the main thing is avoiding the circumstances in the first place because once you're being attacked by a shark, there's very little you can actually do to stop it. So things to avoid, murky water,

especially low light. You don't necessarily want to be out swimming in murky water at like dawn or dusk. Inlets, places where there's brackish or fresh water flowing into the ocean or often places where sharks will hang out. Attractions in the water, like if there's a dead whale nearby, or if you see strangely high amount of marine life in the water, you might want to avoid swimming because that just,

if there's more likely to be fish and dolphins and stuff around, there's also more likely to be a shark. You also just want to read warnings. If you're going to a beach or something, and there's been a lot of shark activity, there'll often be a sign that says high shark activity at that place. Maybe don't go snorkeling there. maybe pick another beach.

I actually, oh, I forgot to bring this up. I just saw this video of this Italian kid in Australia, also right by a place where we're going, who swam in this kind of murky water, just decided to stop and go swimming and snorkeling. Yeah. And videoed his leg being ripped off by a shark. He doesn't actually show the shark like coming up,

but you see him like swimming to the beach afterward and there's just blood all over the water and he's screaming and stuff in his GoPro. It's like, what? What do TikTokers say now? Like, not my leg being missing, something like that. Yeah, oh, yeah. But he was Italian, so he's like, not to me leg, being missing.

Hope I don't slip into a coma. And a coma, whatever. If you're out there, buddy, honestly, sorry you lost your leg. I watched the video and it was like a hard one to watch. Okay, so avoid those things. If you are in the water and there's potential, that there's shark rounder you see a shark. He played that, oh, no, song that they always do on TikTok.

Oh, no, oh no. If you are in the water and you see a tiger shark, the number one thing to remember is to stay calm. If you start splashing or swimming erratically or panicking, all that's going to do is tell that shark that your prey that's trying to escape from it. So you want to face the shark. if you have something you can put in between you in the shark, like if you have a GoPro that's on a pole,

or if you have any kind, like you could take your fin off and put it in between you and the shark, just get something in between you and the animal and then calmly get to safety. So you can like slowly backstroke or whatever to a boat or to safety, but keep your eyes on that shark and keep facing it. And just that is going to greatly reduce your chances of having a problem because these are ambush predators.

And if they know that you can see it, it's probably not going to come in and make contact with you. If it does, then what you can do, and this is, again, this is like higher level, maintain eye contact with it, extend your arm and press your hand flat on its head. Tiger sharks have a really rounded snout, and they have this big flat head. So if you push your hand flat on its head, you can divert the shark down and away from you, and then you can kind of go over the top of it.

And that's like an expert move. Hopefully you don't find yourself in that situation. Sounds hard to like remember too, but yeah. Yeah, but honestly, just remember that big flat head and remember to push it down and kind of roll over top. Yeah. All right. If you actually are attacked by the shark, at that point, eyes, gills, snout are the things

you should try and hit. But again, at that point, you're kind of at the mercy of the shark. You just got to hope you get lucky. All right, let's get into our categories. All right. I want to say, too, with tiger sharks what you were saying. just about like how most of the time you're going to have a pretty positive interaction with them. Mm-hmm.

It kind of reminds me of Jeffs. Like most Jeffs, you're going to have a pretty good interaction with us. But there are like we got a few Dombers out there that, you know. There's some bad Jeffs out there. You don't want to meet them in a murky alleyway. Yeah. Where do you find yourself? Do you think you're going to be a good Jeff or a bad job?

Yeah. I think with me, you'll have a pretty positive. Yeah, I'm pretty good, Jeff. All right. Climbing up that ladder of Jeff. People that have interacted with you, and we'll see about that. Okay, let's get into our categories. My first category that I wanted to do was your favorite organized crime pop culture.

So whatever you want to pick from the world of organized crime, bonus points if it's back in the 1930s. But go ahead and pick whatever you want. I can start us off. Okay. I mean, my favorite, I don't think quite counted because it's point break, but it's just not that organized. It's more just like Surfer Bros. So I want to pick one that seemed like more smart.

And I went with Logan Lucky because it's like really well planned out. And I just really like that movie. And yeah, that's my choice. That's Soderberg that directed Logan Lucky? I think he was. Okay. Soderberg. Mike?

I'm going with The Lies of Locke Lamora One of my favorite books Fantasy book It's about a Gentleman Bastards The Gentleman Bastards Yeah

They're kind of An elite organized Group of con men Who go around Stealing from Rich people In Fantasy Venice I forget what the town's called Do you remember Wes?

No Something but Locke and John Two of the great fantasy characters ever Just a really fun I don't know what the word is Irreverent

Group of people going around doing organized crime. Yeah, you know, I found, when I was watching Arcane, I found myself thinking about that book a lot, which is kind of a weird comparison, but I did. I can see that. Yeah. All right. I'm going to pick Breaking Bad and still organized crime.

I think it's, I probably think it's the best show ever made. I really wanted to pick Sopranos, and then I really wanted to pick Boardwalk Empire because it's 1930s organized crime, but ultimately I had to go with Breaking Bad. They have a scene kind of like this in it. Not really. Breaking bad. They got that guy's head on a tortoise. Oh yeah, it's true.

And the cops find it on the tortoise. Tucco's head, right? Close up, I think. Yeah. All right. So my next question for you guys, your worst experience ever at an aquarium or a zoo. I'll go first on this one.

When I was a kid, we went to SeaWorld. And I know there's a lot of really intense feelings about SeaWorld out there. I think SeaWorld does a lot of good for marine mammals, but they've also done some bad. And something they did bad when I was a kid was they weren't great with their dolphins. And we went to a dolphin tank and the dolphins just had all sorts of weird growths on them and weren't doing well and pretty disgusting. And we touched them and like interacted with them. And I remember even as a kid who should have just been really excited to see dolphins, I remember feeling really sorry for them. So that was probably my worst.

aquarium or zoo experience. I'll go with our last trip to Lagoon when we rode that train. And then it just shows like awesome animals in the worst enclosures. I think honestly, if I could link my like depression and suicidal thoughts back to anything, it'd probably be that train ride. Jesus. Just hasn't. I don't think we should know how to get into that more.

but I do think we should get rid of that zoo. I think maybe it sucks. Side thing in our podcast should be a campaign to get rid of that zoo and get those animals to better homes. Yeah. It's not fair. I couldn't really come up with one for myself. I'll steal Jeff's, but I will say,

last year I went to the San Diego Zoo with my dad, and they have this really cool bus tour that we both hopped on first thing, and there was just this shrieking baby that I know, like, what can you do? And it makes me feel like such a jerk to be like, can you please shut your baby up? But like, you know, I can't help thinking what I think. And it was an annoying baby. I go to the Salt Lake Zoo all the time just because I like to go on walks. And like it's like, why not just go to the zoo?

Yeah. But every once in a while they'll just be like a million little eight-year-olds there. And I'm just like, man, I'm like a 34-year-old just walk. around by myself with like a million little kids like I don't love that imagine if you were one of the bad Jeffs with all those kids running around oh you wouldn't know what to do with yourself you know exactly what to do I do want to say quickly we are we're pretty pro zoo here at tooth and claw a lot of the research I did was funded by zoos zoos have ambassador animals that people can learn from they give them great enrichment those animals are typically animals that can't live in the

wild for whatever reason so we tend to be pretty pro zoo here at this at this here a little podcast. All right, to my favorite category, we're Mike and Jeff paying attention. And today's gift to the winner is going to be, we're going to be spend some time in airports together. And you know how often they have like a seize candy kiosk? I'm going to let you, the winner, pick something up to $15 at the seize candy kiosk that I will pay for in one of the airports that we go to so like one chocolate it's that you know sees is charging a premium at airports you can buy like three of those bordeaux bars for that or maybe like one small box of chocolates great no I'm not I'm not gonna yuck a yum I'm in yeah it's a free

yum man don't yuck you're yum not yucking who wants to go first there's four questions each and then a bonus question and I'll go want to go first I want to go first please my Mike, what color were the boxer trunks on Jimmy's tattoo? One red, one blue. Correct. Jeff, name one thing that the shark vomited it up aside from the arm. A rat and a bird. Ooh, nice.

Oh, maybe a couple of bonus points? We both did kind of two. Okay. Loser has to take a laxative before next episode, Mike. Okay, yeah, sure. Side bed. Or wear red trunks when we go to a lot. Australia. Or you have to take Alexa on the plane. Come on.

Mike. How old was Jimmy when he moved to Australia? Oh, shoot. Yeah, I wasn't paying attention. You didn't say that. I know. I did. Did you? Jeff, do you want to steal? He's good. He gets to guess. Yes, let me guess. 12. Incorrect. Jeff. You had the right numbers. 21. He was 20. Oh, oh, 21. All right. Jeff, you said 21. How long was the shark? You said 20 feet, but I think you were just saying how big females can get. That's as big as they can get. This particular shark was how long?

I want to say 12, 12 feet. Incorrect. Mike, 14? 14, correct. All right, Mike. How old was Brady when he died in his home? Patrick Brady. 93.

Jeff? 71. 76, close. Oh, 76. 71. Jeff. What family of sharks are bull sharks and reef sharks found in? I'll give you a hint because I know you don't, we're listening.

But this will also, if you don't get the, do you want the hint? Because I think if you don't get it, Mike will get it with this hint. Yeah, give me it. There's a movie called Blank for a Dream. Requiem sharks? Requiem. Yep. Good job.

Okay. Did you know it without the hint, Mike? I would have, yeah. You clutched it out, though. That was good on your part. I just knew the movie. Mike, what two types of waters are tiger sharks found in? Salty and fresh.

Incorrect. Jeff. I don't know. What two types of waters? Yes, I said this. And tropical. You got one of them. Tropical and...

And temperate war- waters. You did say murky. You've never said any of this stuff. But that's not going to count for this. Jeff, what is the Australian 1930s name for a police informant? Pfizer.

Fizer. Fizzer. That's the name of the... The vaccine you got. All right. So Jeff's up one point. Wait, you gave me that? Yeah, I gave it to you.

This bonus one, I'm just going to do this. This bonus question is just worth one point. So Mike, if you get it, it's a tie. I'll buy you both seize candy. If you don't get it, then Jeff wins. Oh, let's go, Mike. What is the name of the beach where the shark was displayed? Oh.

Coogee? We're visiting. Mike got it. You both get $6. Let's go. You both just get $7.50 instead of $50. All right. We don't need to take laxatives.

No laxatives. Okay, next category. Although I might anyway. Our next category is something you recommend this week. Something you've been listening to, watching, reading that you recommend. Yeah, I'll go. So in fantasy football, I had a little side bet with a listener. And I should have put their name down by didn't.

But it's basically If he beat me I had to watch this show called Mob Psycho 100 And if I beat him He had to like watch all of one piece So he's like This is a big commitment

But he beat me And at first I didn't like it at all But I'm starting It's starting to grow on me So I'm starting to like this Mob Psycho 100 show Mops'b's great Reagan

Yeah He's great He's funny I'll go any scenes. I got this Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory old-fashioned fudge at the River Woods up in Provo. Great. Go check it out.

For people that don't live here, though, that's inaccessible. Unless, I don't know, you want to make the drive or something. They might have an online store. Rocky Mountain Chocolate is in some other places too. Good. Yeah. Go get it. It's so good.

If there's not in your area, sure, fudge. Okay. I like it. No, I like it. Fudge. Uh, mine is going to be the movie Wonka. Why are you shaking your head, Mike? What do you want me to say?

It's fudge. Go eat it. It tastes good. It's just surprising, I guess. Is it better than most fudge? No, I'm recommending bad fudge to eat everybody. I'll buy you that. I'll buy you that fudge instead of Seas Candy if you want it in the Salt Lake Airport.

Okay. All right. I'm recommending the movie Wonka. I had no desire to. to see this movie. I really didn't need any more Willie Wonka in my life. Wasn't interested at all. Mike went and saw it and really liked it. And I was like, all right, I guess I'll see it. And the other thing that was pulling me in

was it was made by the people that did Paddington. And it had a similar feel. It was just whimsical and fun, like fun musical numbers in it, really well acted. Just like a great fun movie that was just a nice escape. So I really recommended. I thought it was a great movie. Yeah, I had a great time. Because it fudge, Wes? Well, there's fudge in it. It did make you want to eat some fudge. It's good. Oh, that reminds me too. Did I correct my carotid artery thing already? You did? Yeah. Okay. One other thing I wanted to change. Someone asked us a little bit ago, like, what our,

our, like, fun thing for movie treats are, and I just completely spaced my new thing I've been doing, and I wanted to say it. Yeah, you said you like... like to bring in cakes or pies. Yeah. I like that. That's a great answer. I stick to that still. I stick to that actually wanted to say our movie theater is really close to a world market.

And so my new thing is to go into world market right before and buy weird candy from around the world and then take it in. And I really enjoy it. It's been really fun trying like different candies from different countries as I watch a movie. So you know it's a good movie theater candy. What? Good in plenty. Nope. Oh, man.

Hard to disagree. Even when they taste like burnt hair. All right. Ah, man. Jeff, do you got an animal fact for us this week? A baby sea otter can't swim or dive until it's three to four months old. So it hangs on its mother's chest. When the mom goes looking for food, she wraps the little one in kelp to keep it from floating away.

Cute. That is cute. I like that. All right. Do we have any listener questions lined up? Did anyone grab those? I have listener questions. I sent them to you guys.

I don't have subscription questions. Subscription? Yeah. I think we have a couple new ones here. Yeah, here's, I'll just do two quick patron questions. This one's from Cassidy. Cassidy says, hi, guys. I've got a bear question for you.

Hi. If bears have an insanely good sense of smell, how is it possible to come around a corner and surprise them? Would you have to be upwind of the bear in this scenario? Cassidy kind of answered their own question there. Yeah, it really depends on the wind direction. If the wind is blowing your scent toward a bear, there's a much better chance they're going to smell you coming

before they even see or hear you. But if it's blowing the other way, then they're not going to get your scent. So the wind direction really does have a lot to do with that. But if it is blowing toward the bear, they will probably smell you before they ever see you. A lot of times, too, they're like in thick brush. So there's a lot of smells right by them.

Like they stand. up to get like the big distance smells a lot of time, right? Yeah, totally. All right, this one's from Olivia. Olivia says, hi, guys. I was catching up on some bonus episodes, and Jeff's most recent one made me wonder. This is kind of an old question, so sorry, it took us so long, but it was about your hurricane one, Jeff. Olivia said, yeah, if you were guaranteed to survive completely unharmed, what catastrophic natural disaster would you most like to witness up close?

For example, I'm terrified of and fascinated by volcanic eruptions and would love a front row seat to one, if not for the side effect of an excruciating and horrendous death. Liv also says, P.S. I want to give Mike a special shout out. I really adore his episodes and can feel the care he puts into research and narratives. Podcasts wouldn't be the same without him. I agree. But I also love Jeff's. I think they're both great. Podcasts in general or just our podcasts? Our podcasts. But I thought that was a nice thing. That would have been huge. High praise. Thanks. Okay, so what's your natural disaster you want to witness up close?

Tornado. Mike? But like, I want it to, like, go through, like, an abandoned town and watch it, like, rip up houses or something. Yeah. That would be cool. That would be cool. I think it'd be awesome to be able to see a huge earthquake, like a giant seismic split in

the earth right in front of you, and somehow you aren't hurt by it. I think that'd be really cool. A volcano would have been my answer. Like if you do the splits on it. Yeah. Like Van Dam. Yeah. I'm with Liv.

I want to see just a massive volcanic eruption. I was in a volcano. Like I want to see Yellowstone explode. Guatemala. Oh. You were in one? Like a volcano eruption happened by me, a big one. And a hurricane turned into like a tropical storm and hit us at the same time.

And it just rained volcanic sand on us. and it like burned your scalp and stuff. It was crazy. Whoa. Was that Pacaa? Yeah. Yeah. That's the one I hiked and I toasted marshmallows in the lava up there.

Yeah, like rough did a little later. Someone must have thrown a ring of power in there. Okay. Jeff, you got some questions for us? Heather XXS. Do you think babies cry all day because they have an itch? They can't scratch because they're dumb? No, I guess.

Which part is caused by them being dumb again? They can't scratch their own itch. No, I don't. Why do you think they're pretty dumb? They just milk. Attention. Hors. They just, yeah.

I think she's right. Jack doing stuff asks, what's your first ever memory gained consciousness moment? Like your earliest memory, I think. The one I remember. remember is being across our street where we grew up, Wes, and mom yelling at me, Jeff, take your hands out of your pants. Okay.

And that's my earliest memory. That happened two weeks ago. Well, when I went into high school, this cool kid would, on a football team, would have his hand down his pants and I was like, oh, so you can be cool and have your hand in your pants. Yeah. Sometimes it's the warmest place for your hand. It's comfortable.

Yeah. mine is very clear I was like two years old which is too young to have your first memory but my parents went out for a date and they left us with my grandpa Larson who was a bit of a scary person like a real mountain man

really gruff but really funny he had like just a kind of crazy sense of humor and my parents were gone and I remember crying and looking out the window because I thought they were like gone or had died or something because it was one of the first times they had left You're like a dog.

Yeah. And my grandpa, I remember him clearly coming up to me and saying, listen, I don't know where your parents are. And I don't know if they're coming back. So stop crying. And I stopped crying. It scared me. Yeah.

Trauma can, I guess that is a shortcut to early core memories. Yes. Mine is learning the truth about Santa Claus when I was little. Someone came over. Spoiler. Plug your ears. Well, I already told this story. Plug your ears.

if you're, what, 15 years old or younger? Is that when people start to learn? Sure. One of our neighbors just came over dressed up as Santa Claus and it was like really obvious. And my parents even like told me that's who it was. So I think they're just out on the whole lying about Santa Claus thing for me from a young age.

Yeah. Young age. All right. Oh, the Henry Quills. Oh, then Quills. Favorite band or song? of all time or just a current band or song that you like. My favorite of all time probably has to be say it ain't so by Weezer, which is kind of,

I know Weezer's like really gone off and like I kind of get a little embarrassed sometimes saying that. And this actually answers another question we had from a patron recently. They asked like what was a song that changed your life. I still remember being in my room at like 13 years old and hearing that song come over the radio and I only listened to classic rock up until that point really and I was like, oh, this is amazing. And it changed the way I listen to music and it really pointed me in the direction of where

my music taste would go from there. So I still love that song to this day. That's my, that's my pick. Yeah. It's impossible for me to pick like a single favorite. So I'm just going to go with the current side of this question and say, uh, Aquamini by Outcast. or Sister Christian by Night Ranger.

That song is amazing. Dude, 80s, we lost something special with power ballads, you know, when they went out of fashion and they just never came back. We got a rectify that. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. Yeah, I don't know.

You guys are more into music than me. I'll just go with our listener, It's X music. I'll shout him out. I like his song, Bad Wolf. And then I like to live you, Rodriguez's song, I want to get him back that there's a commercial. Her new album is good. Yeah. So good.

Okay. So Aaron's 393 asks, who's the most famous person you can think of that your mom would not know of? Sorry, Mike. Oh. Yeah. That's a fair disclaimer. You can do Cindy if you want. I was wondering, do you think she knows Kanye or John Cina?

I bet she knows Kanye and John Cena. Yeah. I'm going to say Florence Pugh. Okay. I'm going to say Kanye West. Okay. I think Kanye was like enough of a breakthrough artist and like stuff other than music. Like Dave's got Kim Kardashian.

I hope mom doesn't know about Kanye. And like did the Grammy thing. Maybe Drake. Drake is kind of going with that same. Or even Olivia Rodrigo. Yeah. All right. Last one.

Court Kelly's 89. If you had a billion dollars, where would you choose to live and why? If I had a billion dollars? Yeah. I'd give most of it away, first of all. Second, I would choose to live. I think I would just build a really nice big house on Flathead Lake in Montana. I just think.

And then I'd probably have a summer house somewhere or a way. Cherry Orchard there? Yeah, but I would just want a... Would you go doomsday and have like a basement where you can survive of an apocalypse? Maybe. I mean, with a billion dollars, you could do anything. For sure, yeah. I think that's an obscene amount of money to have, so I wouldn't have that much.

Well, Mike owes me that much, actually. That's true. Is I still down on you for that? I have a billion dollars. Shoot. Yeah, maybe I'd buy up all that land that just burnt in Hawaii and build a huge house there. It's kind of evil. The worst person ever.

Yeah. No, I think I would keep it pretty modest. I really like the houses in the show. What's it called? Big Little Lies, like in, by Monterey. But like, just like a nice, really nice house, but nothing like huge. I don't, I would never want a mansion. I just think it's stupid.

Yeah. I agree. Mike? I've had this thought in my head that someday, somehow I'm going to end up in Wisconsin. Jeff can attest to this. I've talked about it for over a decade at this point. I read about, what's his name on, the Nuggets, Jeff, the Aaron. Aaron.

Gordon. Gordon, yeah. He has like a warehouse that he transformed into just a full court basketball court. And then he just lives in like a little room off to the side up above it. I think that's what I'd do. That'd be so cool. I'd love that, but just a full basketball. basketball court in my house.

90% of your house is just a basketball court. Yeah, right. Yeah, that'd be cool. All right. Is that it? Yeah. Our last two categories, Tiger shark conservation.

We've talked about this a bit, but tiger sharks, like all larger sharks, are seeing massive population decline due to shark finning. Huge numbers are also killed as bycatch from commercial fisheries. They're also a shark that's directly targeted because of some of the medicinal properties of their liver or medicinal properties in quotation marks. They're also prized by sport fishermen and even their skin.

They make leather out of tiger shark's skin. So this is a shark. Really? It's like, yeah, death by a thousand cuts. Also, sometimes when I. For, like, clothes? For, like, drums and some other stuff. It's not so much clothes.

It's like other uses. And culturally, there are some cultures that used it as like drum coverings and other things. And personally, I think that's one of the big tragedies of like us losing so many animals is that these cultures can't even safely use the animals in ways that they have for millennia anymore, which kind of sucks. Also, when there's a tiger shark attack in certain places, there'll be coals. Australia is famous for doing shark coals. That kills a lot of tiger sharks.

They're currently listed as near threatened by the IUCN. They're just near threatened largely because we have no real idea how many tiger sharks are actually out there. But they are at a high risk of extinction. Their populations are drastically affected by the demand for shark finning number one and then by catch number two. Just in the hour, two hours that we've talked here, over 20,000 sharks have probably been killed. So pretty crazy to think about. Yeah, it sucks. I hope you can be president and stop that.

I don't want to be president, but if I am, that will be one of my names. Right in West Larson, if you vote. Okay. How much do we like this animal, Tiger Sharks? We've done it before, but I want to do it again. How much do we like them? It's a sweet name. Like Tiger and Shark?

That's a sweet combination. Beautiful shark, too. I'm giving them a nine. They're cool. I love sharks. I love tiger sharks. I love you guys. I love you too, man.

Thanks. Yeah, I'm doing nine as well. I think they're probably like my fourth or fifth favorite shark. Whale shark, great white sharks, hammerhead sharks are my top three. Yeah. I think my like top six sharks all get a ten claw. And this is one of them. So sharks are some of my favorite animals.

All right. Do you like tigers or tiger sharks more? Probably tigers. Mike? Tigers, for sure, for me. Really? Because I love tigers and I love sharks. Tiger sharks is both.

It's not like really, though. If tiger sharks were the only shark in the ocean, then I would like tiger sharks more. But because it's like we only have tigers and then we have lots of shark species, I have to say tigers. We got a lot of cat species. Yeah.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's a good point, Jeff. It's a different way to look at it. All right. Well, thanks, guys. I thought this was a fun story. I hope you guys liked it.

And, you know, next week we're going to be back, or next time we do one of these, we're going to be back with a news episode. We're going to be in Australia. Animal attacks, yeah. So we'll see how that goes. Live from Australia, not live. Unlive.

Alive. Dead. From Australia. Yeah, alive in Australia. We did, we did reference multiple times in this episode, some of our subscriber episodes. If you're looking for more tooth-and-clock content, You can find us on Patreon.

Every other week we release shows that are only available to our subscribers. If you'd rather just be on Apple and have it show up in your Apple feed, the Apple Gris Club is another option. We love our subscribers. Thank you, everyone, who's supporting us right now. Yeah, love all you listeners except for the worms. Yeah, I love those worms. I love them too.

All right. See you guys. All right, love it. Bye. Bye.